Whoopi Goldberg....Celebrity Apologist

So let me preface this post saying that I am a HUGE fan of Whoopi's acting (Celie in Color Purple is perhaps the most brilliant and touching character ever conceived in literature and film) and from what I can tell I'd probably enjoy sharing some green tea and biscotti with her...I, knowing she doesn't like to drink, show up to her house with some fabulously italian biscotti assuming we were having coffee and then she offers me green tea and politely puts out the biscotti I brought and then we'd laugh and joke about our slightly mismatched pairing and enjoy a simply  marvelous hour of chit chat about what a wonderful person Patrick Swayze is.   LOVE IT!  Anyhoo...with all that being said, I'm not sure about Whoopi's place on the View.  She is definitely supposed to represent liberals, but I also feel she is put into the role of apologist for people's actions.  Her first day on the show, she confusingly explains that she didn't think Michael Vick understood that dog fighting was bad because he is from the deep South and apparently that's what people do here.  She later explains that she doesn't agree with what he did, but that she sees WHY he would think it was OK.  When the group was discussing Roman Polanski being arrested in Switzerland for a crime he never served time for in the US, she feels very passionate about being clear that he didn't commit "rape rape".  She claims later that she was clarifying that she was trying to point out that it was not rape in the sense that he had sex with someone who didn't consent, it was sex with a minor (However the law clearly states that someone on drugs cannot legally consent nor can a minor consent...so for someone so focused on getting the facts straight missed the mark on what the definition of rape is).  Most recently she claims that despite using terms such as "nigger" and "wetback" and blaming all the wars in the world on Jews, Mel Gibson is neither racist nor anti-semitic.  He's just a bonehead, an asshole, and a drunk.  She knows this because he's been in her house with her children. To me it's just like the excuse that someone cannot be racist because they have a black friend.  Now perhaps throwing around phrases like "nigger" and "wetback" or blaming all the worlds wars on Jews does not a bigot make, but I also haven't seen Mel take any action other than going to Whoopi's house for dinner that empowers him to use such words.  The fact that he's using them in a phone call that is pretty much the definition of misogyny, does not lead me to believe he has thoroughly analyzed the power structure of the US that makes all of the things he says so hateful.  I know that Whoopi has her role to play on the View, but I wish she were more thoughtful in how she defends people who have done some pretty bad things.  I also added a Michael Jackson defense clip, not particularly because I disagree with what she says, but because it's another example of her defending someone's actions/behaviors on the basis of him being her friend. (Michael Jackson is the only person she defends who was not proven guilty).